UK electorate deeply split ahead of EU election

British voters are heavily fragmented and no party is on course win more a quarter of the votes, if the United Kingdom participates in the May 23 European Parliament election.

Labour is the clear leader with 24 percent support, in YouGov’s poll of 1,843 peopleconducted April 10-11, the first poll on British voting intentions since an EU leaders summit agreed to extend the Brexit deadline until up to October 31.

The Conservatives are in a second place with just 16 percent support, less than half the support they achieved at the 2017 U.K. general election.

Around half of the voters who say they would back the Conservatives in a national election will withhold their votes from the party in the European election, YouGov found.

Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party (with 15 percent support) and Farage’s former party — the UK Independence Party (UKIP) on 14 percent — are challenging the Conservatives for second place.

Farage has a chance to achieve a similar upset to the 2014 European Parliament election. Then, as then leader of the UK Independence party, Farage shocked the political establishment by leading UKIP to victory: the first time a party other than the Conservatives or Labour had topped a nationwide vote in a century.

Other minor parties are scoring below 10 percent support including the new Change UK party (on 7 percent), and traditional minor parties the Liberal Democrats (8 percent), Greens (8 percent) and Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru (6 percent).